


Drive

by Frangipanidownunder



Category: The X-Files
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-19
Updated: 2019-08-19
Packaged: 2020-09-07 11:49:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 728
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20309014
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Frangipanidownunder/pseuds/Frangipanidownunder
Summary: Hurt/comfort: “Where did all those bruises come from?” combined with “There you are” for the @xfficchallenges prompt 17.Post IWTB, on the run. Angsty.





	Drive

It’s been a month. A month of tyres humming over winding blacktop, covering up the thrum of their hearts. A month of brooding mountains towering over their whispered conversations. A month of tall, dark trees crowding in on their secrets. A month of off-the-track motels with templated clerks and templated rooms, with tepid water not quite powerful enough to wash away the fear and aging mattresses not quite thick enough to swallow their guilt.

This one is no different. There’s a blinking neon outside their room, an irritating reminder of their predicament. Life – on, off; on, off. A flickering hold on a temporary future. He suppresses the urge to smash it. He doesn’t want permanent darkness. He wants to find the light.

She’s in the shower and he listens to the clunk and groan of the ancient plumbing. His heart makes the same noises every time she sighs in her sleep or dyes her hair again or writes letters to her mom that she crumples into the trash can. The remains of their shared burrito is congealing on a chipped plate on the rickety table, taco seasoning wafts around the room with each blast from the heater. His eyes are gritty. His throat is drying. A dull ache pulls at his temples. He reclines, head on backs of hands. If he could only be still, be empty, just for a moment.

When he comes to, she isn’t there. Her towel is folded over the too-short rail in the bathroom. The mirror is almost clear again, save for a bloom of mist in the top right corner. The khaki jacket she favours is still hanging on the back of the chair, but her wallet is gone.

Outside, the day is trapped, sun half-strung in a purple sky, the moon a ghost above it. He checks the environs, a necessary habit. There’s a kid pushing a bike across the road. A brindle dog cocking its leg against an unlucky red sedan’s tyre. An old man stooped over a walking stick.

The park is grimy, old leaves scattered across a path that’s more weed than paving. The playground equipment is tired, silvered timber and split plastic. The boy with the bike is hanging off a swing, smoking.

Scully is on a bench by the lake. There’s a pair of ducks floating towards a clump of reeds. In their transient world, this seems like a good moment to snatch. He sits besides her.

“There you are,” he says, watching the birds stretch their wings and shake water from their bodies. She inclines her head to his shoulder, her dark hair falling. It’s still a shock, the colour, how it drains her face, how it makes her eyes cold. Or maybe it’s not the hair.

She shivers and he looks at her. Sees the discoloured marring around her wrists. Takes her hand in his, gently.

“Where did all those bruises come from?”

The ducks squabble as the dog runs around the lake, disappearing into the trees beyond.

“It doesn’t matter,” she says. Her eyes shut in a slow blink, shutting out the truth.

“It does to me.”

“I’m glad you slept,” she says. “You needed it.”

“Did I do this, Scully?”

He’s been having nightmares. Fear crawling through his veins, dread pinning him to the bed. Faceless men tearing at them, clawing him apart from her, pulling her screaming into the void ahead.

“I’m fine, Mulder.”

She slips her arm through his elbow into his as they walk around the water in silence. The day finally ends. Another night closes in.

The mattress sinks beneath them. It’s been a month and she finally lets him in. She pulls him down with greedy fingers kneading his ass, with a hungry mouth devouring him, with a searing heat that swallows him whole and sets the nerve along his spine on fire. He implodes. She cries out with abandon, shuddering, falling.

In the night, he wakes with a start. But she moves closer, draping her wrist over his chest and he kisses his apology, his love around the bracelet of bruises.

They leave the next morning. The dog sits by the bus stop up the street. Scully writes another letter, scribbling across the motel note paper in her precise lettering. Behind, ugly clouds gather. Ahead, silvery light filters across the sky. They drive towards the sun.


End file.
